Dead Letters
NEVILLE LISTER
Neville Lister, b. 1962, Johannesburg. Commercial photographer (mainly advertising: ‘nation-building epics’, magazine features, property portfolios). Recently some exhibited work. Contact: Claudia Fischhoff, Pollak Gallery, Johannesburg
Neville Lister grew up in Johannesburg and studied at the University of the Witwatersrand without completing a degree. He left South Africa in the early 1980s and lived for a decade in London, where he began his photographic career as a location scout. After assignments for department-store catalogues, property portfolios and ‘everything in between’, he found a niche in the women’s magazine market.
Soon after South Africa’s first democratic election in 1994, Lister returned to Johannesburg to pursue his commercial work. In the early 2000s, he began to photograph on his own account, although it was some years before he exhibited or attracted critical attention. His photographs of walls appeared in the Public][Private group show at the Switch Box in 2008; and his Thresholder series, portraits of people with their letterboxes, was shown at the Pollak Gallery the following year. At this time, he was mentored by renowned photographer Saul Auerbach.
Lister’s current project involves a cache of undelivered letters that once belonged to a Dr Pinheiro, a medical doctor who sought refuge in South Africa after the 1975 revolution in Mozambique. Unable to practise without the proper certification, Dr Pinheiro found work in the sorting room at Johannesburg’s Jeppe Street Post Office. Here he came into possession of the ‘dead letters’, various items of mail intended for people in the city but never delivered because the addresses were incomplete or indecipherable. Lister acquired the letters in turn shortly after his relocation from London. For many years, he was unsure what to make of them and could not bring himself to open the envelopes.
In 2010, while scouting for one of his Thresholder photos in downtown Johannesburg, Lister was attacked and robbed of his camera. The thugs strangled him and left him lying unconscious in the street with his pockets turned inside out. In an account of the incident, he writes: ‘I remember fading to black; and I remember coming round again, sprawled under a blue sky, amazed to be alive. I am troubled by the derangement of consciousness I experienced in these moments: random images flickered through my mind like slides falling through a broken carousel or letters through a slot. People say your past flashes before your eyes at the point of death and perhaps this is what they mean, except that I was not dying but coming back to life. The light was blinding.’
A few months later, Lister began opening the dead letters. Reading these messages from the past and taking them back to the people who wrote them has become his admittedly quixotic mission. He has made several journeys in search of the far-flung return addresses on the letters. The people who posted them, thirty years ago and more, are long gone, but the journeys are a distraction and photographing the places is consoling. Transcriptions of five of the dead letters are presented here. The original letters and Lister’s photographs of locations associated with them were exhibited in Kraków in 2011 (see ‘Dead Letter Gallery’).
Fixing a chaotic moment is Lister’s ‘speciality’ as a photographer. He is known to his colleagues as ‘Mr Frosty’. In April 2009, he explained this nickname to a journalist: ‘The joke is that I’m known in the industry as the frozen-moment guy. You know, the moment when things teeter, when they hover and vibrate, just before the fall. Capturing it in the real world is no longer a job for a photographer. Anyone can freeze an instant digitally and tinker with it and thaw it out again… When it comes to these things, I’m like some old geezer who insists on writing with a pencil. I’m no Luddite, I appreciate the technology; it’s just not for me. I still want to stage it all, to set up something foolishly complicated and get it on film, hoping for a small, unlikely miracle.’
Letter 1
L. S. to Maryvonne, 1978, Paris (tr. from French)
17, rue Boulard, 75014 PARISSeptember, 1978
My dear Maryvonne,
I worry about you! The news reaching us from S. Africa is not good. On Sunday when I came back from Jean-Richard in Auxerre I saw the most terrible thing on television. I was so upset I phoned J-R at once, although we had only just been together. To see a man doused with gasoline and burnt alive, and no one lifting a finger to prevent it, and all for being black. Or is it some other reason? You must write again and tell us what is happening, especially with you. J-R and everyone else in Auxerre are worried sick.
Your last letter troubled me. What is the meaning of this fancy dress? I understand, I think, that you must go to dangerous places because of your work. I am the first to say that the research is important. But that you should go about in disguise, dressed as a man, as a black man, seems strange to me. Surely a minstrel costume is more likely to get you into trouble than to protect you? Who are you hiding from? And who are the comrades you mention? I believe that Orlando is in Soweto. I told J-R it makes me think of Orlando Furioso and he said he doubted very much they had heard of Ariosto where you are.
You always tell me not to sound like a professor, but that’s who I am. And to me you will always be a student, even after your habilitation, please God! In any event, sounding like a professor is one of the few benefits of the job, so here goes. Picturing you with your face painted black (is this really what you do? — it seems so strange) I was reminded of the episode in Homer where Ulysses creeps into Troy disguised as a slave. Helen tells the story to Telemachus, who is looking for news of his father. Does it come back to you? No half measures for Ulysses: he beats himself black and blue, he takes the lash to his own back until the blood seeps through his filthy rags, he pounds bruises into his cheeks. Then he skulks through the streets of the enemy city. The disguise is a good one. Apart from Helen, who says nothing, not a soul recognises him.
It’s a remarkable story, not so? But that’s enough of the Ancients. When I hear from you, I will write again to say what I mean by it. Please be careful. Perhaps you should think about coming back to Paris for the summer. Maude says you can stay with her. You will always have a home here.
Your affectionate teacher and worried friend,
[Signed] L. S.
Letter 2
M. Benadie to Basil, 1979, Laingsburg (tr. from Afrikaans)
Oct 1979
Dear Basil,
How is life in the Golden City? I have phoned repeatedly, but no one answers.
Last Thursday an alarming thing happened. You remember I said I would dig a fishpond in the backyard as soon as I moved in? Well, I finally started. A whole year has flown past because I am always busy in the shop. I had just started when Mrs Greyling from next door came and said I shouldn’t just dig holes like that. I said why, and she said well, certain things that cannot be named are buried in that yard and should rather be left undisturbed.